Come and Go, Come and Stay
by Omnicat
Summary: Lo and behold, the wonders of pre–romantic Catherine Bloom and Heero Yuy... pre–romance. Featuring humble beginnings, surprise visits at ungodly hours, and soup at those same ungodly hours.


**Title:** Come and Go, Come and Stay

**Author:** Omnicat

**Rating:** K+

**Genre:** Romance, Humor

**Spoilers & Desireable Foreknowledge:** Episode 10-15 if you're talking about specific details, but let's just make it the entire series plus Trowa's chapter in _Episode Zero _just to be safe.

**Warnings:** Non-descript semi-nudity.

**Pairings:** Heero x Catherine

**Disclaimer:** *checks tickybox*

**Summary:** Lo and behold, the wonders of pre-romantic Catherine Bloom and Heero Yuy romance. Featuring humble beginnings, surprise visits at ungodly hours, and soup at those same ungodly hours.

**Author's Notes:** I wrote this a long time ago, but never posted it, because I wasn't satisfied with it. After a recent rewrite I feel that it can't get much better without changing the tone of it drastically, and, well, I already did that with a more recent fic called Changing Times, Changing Cars. The similarities between the set-up and title of both are striking, completely coincidental. It was odd enough for me to decide to post this as well. For oddity's sake. :3

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**Come and Go, Come and Stay**

Someone was knocking on the door of her trailer.

As Catherine groggily lifted her head to look at the clock, she could wring the neck of whoever it was and happily drink his or her blood. Who in their right mind would come by at six in the morning, on a Saturday?

Trowa had learned long ago what she was like in the morning and _had_ lost his suicidal tendencies. So it wouldn't be him, unless there was an emergency -

Catherine was up and at the door in a single jolt of urgency. Thus, her surprise was great when she opened her door to...

Heero Yuy?

_What the..._

He looked up at her. "Catherine." he stated.

_He remembers my name?_

Her voice was surprise become sound. "Heero?" Catherine stared at the young man she hadn't seen in so long. Then she remembered that the troupe had taught her that staring at people when they could notice wasn't polite. A way to mask it was required.

"Heero - what are you doing here?" she stammered.

"Standing."

Now she could not but gape openly. Was that what she thought it was? From Heero? The same Heero that she remembered?

No, not that Heero. She could tell he was different. The Heero that had been with them had been taut like the string of a bow, tense to the point of paranoia, ready to snap. This Heero Yuy was relaxed, had just made a smart-ass remark, and was looking her up and down without any suspicion.

Heh. She was dressed only in her knickers and an oversized shirt. A guy was checking her out.

Catherine crossed her arms, cocked her hip, and gave him a look that said very clearly that _Yes, I have eyes too, and they see you staring at me._

Heero raised an eyebrow. "You're not ashamed?"

"You're not enjoying the view?" she shot back, smirking.

"I am." Heero admitted, completely casual. "You provide an enjoyable view."

"I'd think so, yeah. It's my job."

They were flirting. Flirting. She and Heero Yuy. When this finally made it through the dense morning-fuzziness in her head, Catherine had to ask: "Did you ever apologize for making Trowa try to blow himself up?"

"I apologize."

Laughter came before she ever saw it coming. The ice was broken, hacked into sizeable chunks and heated in a pot so it could be used to make tea.

"Come in, come in. Have you come to see Trowa? Have you woken him up as well?" she asked, and Heero found himself dragged into the trailer and shoved _into_ the couch. While he answered "Him and you, actually. Not yet.", coffee appeared, and then they were seated across from each other.

"So." Catherine stated, sipping her coffee. "What brings you here?"

Heero shrugged. "See how you guys are doing. It's been a long while."

"Yeah." Catherine sighed, looking at that all too familiar mop of messy chocolate-coloured hair. She'd kind of missed that hair. No matter what she did, she could never get it to behave. It was just as stubborn as Heero himself. "Well, as you can see - or will see, as soon as people start waking up - we're doing just fine. The ringmaster agreed to let Trowa do a new act with the lions. You should see him, he's an absolute natural with them." She tilted her head to the side and said more tenderly: "You look good too. Better than before."

"Hm." A crooked little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

_Was that a hM? Not a hN but a hM? Wow, that's more than I ever got last time._

She wondered what had changed. Trowa always said Heero was the hardest one to stay in touch with, even after he had taken a job practically under the nose of half of all journalists in the Earth Sphere. Yet Heero Yuy was sitting here, at her table, while the rest of the civilized world was still asleep. And Catherine found she couldn't keep her eyes off of him. He had lost none of his mystery since the last time they met, and looked better than ever before.

Admitted, the last time she had actually _seen_ him, Trowa had brought him in more dead than alive, and he had lain in a coma for a month. When he had woken up, he had, understandably, looked like crap. And before he was even entirely healed, he had already gone out looking for people to execute him.

Only now did it become clear how good looking he was. It was amazing, the difference a lack of bags under his eyes and hollow cheeks could do. Catherine had often caught some of the younger girls in the troupe trying to peek through Trowa's windows. It had brought her a devious kind of pleasure to send them a reprimanding look while marching right in through the door.

The silence between them as they sipped their coffee was comfortable, but she _was_ waiting for something. "Well, are you going to complement me back or what?" she finally asked, jokingly.

"I already did, before."

She blinked a bit before it clicked. "Oh yeah, you're right!" she chuckled. "Sorry about that."

"It's fine." Heero looked around the trailer. "Not much has changed here."

_Poor guy,_ Catherine thought, hearing his tone of voice, _for once he's trying to strike up a conversation and there's nothing to talk about!_

"Trowa told me that your life, on the other hand, has changed quite a lot." she said to avoid the silence turning awkward. "What's it like being a professor?"

He smirked. Rather fondly, Catherine noted. "It's... refreshing." was all he had to say.

Unable to restrain her curiosity, she went on: "Working in the Sank Kingdom, you must keep in touch with Relena Darlian. Trowa said you two were friends? He was really impressed with her, how's she doing?"

Heero's smirk turned into a slight, but sincere smile. "We are. She's doing great. She's showed and taught me a lot of things. I always felt connected to her, but only recently have I begun to see just how similar we are. It's like I found the twin sister I never had.." A slight shift in the curve of his lip changed the smirk into a real smile. "And I got a classical jerk of a big brother along with it."

As she watched the way his face relaxed now that he was grinning at her, how he seemed to naturally fit in the environment of her home, she realised that a latent tug in her own heart had dissolved. Taking care of him for as long as she had had created a bond. She hadn't exactly missed him; as unintentionally hilarious as his presence could be, there was too much tension between them back then for something like that. But because he had left without ever reaching out to her, who had devoted himself to him for so long, Catherine felt something had been left unresolved.

Maybe he felt it too. Maybe that's why he came back.

Catherine smiled brightly. "How long will you be staying?"

"A week. Ten days at best. I'm looking for some other people as well."

Well, that pretty much confirmed it.

Catherine laughed merrily. She stood up and collected his cup to put it in the sink. "Where will you be staying? Do you have any luggage? I'd lend you some of Trowa's clothes, but I'm afraid they're too big for you."

"No need to, I left my stuff at the hotel down main street."

"Have you eaten yet?"

"No."

"Want some soup?"

"What, at this hour?"

"Are you saying there is something wrong with my soup, Heero Yuy?"

"No, no. Soup sounds good."

"Good."

At ten, Trowa decided the risk of decapitation had waned enough to knock on his sister's door.

Cathy opened and beamed at him. "Trowa! There you are. We were beginning to wonder whether you'd show up at all today." She hauled him into the trailer by the arm, and he needn't begin to wonder who the other part of the 'we' was.

"Heero." he acknowledged the Japanese frantically looking for a way to ditch the bowl of, Trowa guessed by the smell, soup in his hands. Said desperate young man quickly set the bowl back on the table and answered Trowa's gaze like an innocent person would.

"Trowa."

"When did you get here?"

"Around six."

Trowa's eyebrows rose to improbable heights. "And you're still okay? You're not hiding any injuries?"

Now one of Heero's eyebrows rose. "Should I be?"

Trowa turned to his sister with a slight frown. "Cathy, are _you_ okay?"

"Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?" she answered brightly.

Trowa's frown deepened minutely for a moment, before disappearing altogether. So Cathy's morning temper had mysteriously disappeared once Heero came along. And she wasn't making snide remarks about his self-destruction stint. So? Sounded like a good thing to him. If that was the result, Heero should come over more often.

Trowa smiled slightly. "How long will you be staying, Heero?"

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**PSAN:** Hope you liked it. ^_^


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